HPC on Pace for 5-Year 6.8% CAGR; Guess Which Hyperscaler Spent $10B on IT Last Year?

By Doug Black

June 20, 2019

In the neck-and-neck horse race for HPC server market share, HPE has hung on to a slim, shrinking lead over Dell EMC – but if server and storage market shares are combined, Dell EMC has taken a three-plus point lead (29.8 vs 26.5 percent), according to analyst firm Intersect360 Research’s latest HPC market update.

Overall, the HPC industry grew by 3.2 percent YoY to $36 billion in 2018, according to the firm, driven by the enterprise sector, now comprising 58 percent of the market, and by the server product category, which captured 35 percent of HPC spending and grew by 9.1 percent.

Growth was weighted toward the higher end of the market, with supercomputing-class systems (above $1.5 million expenditures) outpacing all categories, and entry-level systems (under $50,000) trailing. Cloud HPC grew 16 percent to more than $1.2 billion and HPC storage rose by slightly more than 1 percent to $5.7 billion.

Addison Snell

Undermining scattered concerns of another AI winter, Intersect360 reported that $8 billion was spent on machine learning 2018, a whopping 90 percent by hyperscale companies. Within HPC markets, most advanced AI use cases were in the financial services industry, while 56 percent of HPC organizations are running machine learning – usually with the same hardware as HPC but often with configuration changes (i.e., GPUs). “AI workloads are sweeping through all types of enterprises and research, which is affecting both the HPC and Hyperscale markets. In HPC, we’re seeing not only a measurable effect on top-line budget expectations, but also different technology choices being made to accommodate machine learning workloads.”

“The growth (in HPC) was concentrated in the server market…,” said Addison Snell, Intersect360 Research CEO during a presentation on the floor of the ISC High Performance conference in Frankfurt yesterday. “What that means is people were buying heavier nodes – in this case the biggest effect came from machine learning, with people configuring in more GPUs as part of their server nodes, which made the node relatively more expensive. We also saw storage components getting pulled back into the server, mostly in the form of flash… Now storage is coming back into the node again, but instead of with spinning disk, we see it with flash and NVME components.”

Looking ahead, Intersect360 foresees an HPC market CAGR of 6.8 percent over the next five years, surpassing $50 billion in 2023, “based on strong market fundamentals and increases in machine learning and analytics workloads.”

Some of Intersect360’s most interesting findings were in the hyperscale sector, which the firm places in a different category from HPC. Overall, the hyperscale market grew by 30 percent last year to $57 billion, with 11 tier 1 hyperscalers spending more than $1 billion each on IT infrastructure and comprising 81 percent of all hyperscale spending – with one of them, which Snell declined to name, breaking through the $10 billion barrier for IT spending in a single year. In fact, Snell said, that company spent “well over” $1 billion.

Source: Intersect360 Research

“If you think people (vendors) are paying attention to hyperscale companies ahead of, say, HPC, consider that a large supercomputer costs on the order of $100 million or more,” Snell said, “but there are 11 companies that spent more than $1 billion on hyperscale infrastructure in one year, so that’s an order of magnitude greater. So if you get one of those companies, that’s a lot of chips or NICs that you sell.”

Looking at HPC revenues by verticals, Intersect360 found that commercial sectors now total 58 percent of the market, led by financial services at 13 percent followed by large product manufacturing and bio-sciences, both at 8 percent, and energy, consumer product manufacturing and retail, each at 5 percent.

On the research, or “traditional HPC,” side of the industry, Intersect360 said the academic/not-for-profit sector had 17 percent of HPC market last year, followed by national security at 11 percent and national research labs at 10 percent.

Source: Intersect360 Research

As for HPC server market shares, Dell EMC continues to close on HPE’s lead, now less than a percentage point, Snell said. He added that HPC servers are selling well relative to the rest of HPE server products. “This is actually about the highest pull through HPE has ever gotten as a proportion of their entire server business,” said Snell, noting that HPE has lost business in the hyperscale sector, including servers sold to Microsoft Azure.

Based on Intersect360 survey results, the “top named” system suppliers for 2018 were HPE, Dell EMC and Lenovo, accounting for 43 percent share of all mentions, with HPE continuing to account for about one-third of the reported installations, Snell said. Supermicro continues to gain share, according to Intersect360, with 5.2 percent of the systems reported, up from 4.4 percent the previous year.

HPE’s recent acquisition of Cray will add to HPE’s server market share (though Snell said that, according to his latest research, when server and storage market shares are combined, Dell would remain ahead of HPE combined with Cray).

“The HPE-Cray deal puts together two powerhouses in high-performance computing,” Snell said. “In 2018, HPE was the market leader for worldwide HPC server revenue for the sixth consecutive year. Meanwhile Cray had the greatest percentage growth in the same category from 2017 to 2018, in addition to its massive exascale wins looking forward. The combination will add to HPE’s position in market revenue while establishing HPE as an elite provider at the apex of the supercomputing market.”

Among storage system suppliers, Snell said DDN, Dell EMC and HPEs’ share of reported storage systems based on its HPC site census survey increased slightly from 2017. He said 49 of all active storage systems have 1 petabyte or more of storage capacity.

This article first appeared in HPCwire‘s sister publication EnterpriseAI.news.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

Nvidia Appoints Andy Grant as EMEA Director of Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI

March 22, 2024

Nvidia recently appointed Andy Grant as Director, Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). With over 25 years of high-performance computing (HPC) experience, Grant brings a Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire